Editorial Reviews

Barnes & Noble - Lydia Vanderloo

Protest music rarely goes down with the ease of a top-shelf martini. But leave it to Washington, D.C., duo Thievery Corporation to whip up a sonic cocktail that's equal parts conscience and style. Partners in crime Rob Garza and Eric Hilton take inspiration from deep record collections -- sampling Latin jazz and Bacharach pop to ska, dub, and sounds from the Middle and Far East -- and their youthful days on the progressive fringe of D.C.'s counterculture, listening to leaflet-toting bands like Fugazi. It all comes together on Thievery Corp's fourth album, The Cosmic Game, with a twist -- an appropriately global dose of psychedelia. Songs like "Warning Shots," ...

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Editorial Reviews

Barnes & Noble
- Lydia Vanderloo

Protest music rarely goes down with the ease of a top-shelf martini. But leave it to Washington, D.C., duo Thievery Corporation to whip up a sonic cocktail that's equal parts conscience and style. Partners in crime Rob Garza and Eric Hilton take inspiration from deep record collections -- sampling Latin jazz and Bacharach pop to ska, dub, and sounds from the Middle and Far East -- and their youthful days on the progressive fringe of D.C.'s counterculture, listening to leaflet-toting bands like Fugazi. It all comes together on Thievery Corp's fourth album, The Cosmic Game, with a twist -- an appropriately global dose of psychedelia. Songs like "Warning Shots," featuring dancehall MC Sleepy Wonder and Indian singer Gunjan, and "Amerimacka," with Jamaican singer Notch, suggest the meditative side of ska, infusing popular Western sounds with island riddims and cries from the oppressed. There are also forays down south the Latin-flavored "Sol Tapado," featuring Cape Verdean singer Patrick de Santos and out east the sitar-infused "Doors of Perception," again featuring Gunjan. But this disc leans more heavily on rock sounds than its predecessors, with guest shots from the Flaming Lips on the woozy "Marching the Hate Machines into the Sun," which evokes Zero 7, Perry Farrell the spacey "Revolution Solution", and David Byrne the more up-tempo "The Heart's a Lonely Hunter", broadening the mind in more ways than one. They may have been the unwitting progenitors of down-tempo dance music, but Garza and Hilton's brainy spin on lounge proves they're interested in more than velvet-rope fabulousness. This cabal aims to push boundaries, both musical and otherwise.

All Music Guide
- David Jeffries

The ingredients -- electronic beats, dub, soft Brazilian tones, sitars, and women singing in foreign languages -- are entirely the same, but Thievery Corporation have never sounded so genuine. Despite the same old sound and a busy release schedule leading up to it, The Cosmic Game comes across as fresh as a debut and surprisingly indifferent toward being the in thing. What it is is music for music's sake, all laid out with the utmost care, giving listeners a fully thought-out album that makes the "forward" button on your CD player purposeless. Effortlessly flowing from the indie-grooving "Marching the Hate Machines Into the Sun" with the Flaming Lips to reggae to samba to psychedelia and beyond, the album is trimmed of all fat. Instrumentals with clever grooves sometimes overstayed their welcome on previous Thievery albums, but here they're whittled down to interludes when need be and positioned as chillout segues between the more striking numbers. The druggy, Perry Farrell-inna-reggae-style "Revolution Solution" is one of these stunners, but the superstars don't own all the highlights. As dank, Jamaican-flavored horns echo into the distance, siren Sista Pat lures listeners into the deep world of "Wires and Watchtowers" while soulful crooner Notch takes things uptown on the cool "Amerimacka" before the Corp turn the tune into one of their stickiest dub outings yet. The pleasant "The Heart's a Lonely Hunter" deserves mention because David Byrne guests on vocals, and while it's very good, it's the most forgettable number on this outing. The track brings a very slight reminder of when Thievery Corporation have let ambition trump the meaningful and meaty, but the otherwise purposeful and certain Cosmic Game is so darkly delicious you have to admit it's their masterwork.

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Customer Reviews

Anonymous

Posted October 1, 2010

Wanna Chill?? Listen to this.

This cd is awesome. A beautiful mix of jazz, lounge, and indian music. It's a great cd to listen in the car while driving around or if you just want to relax in the house.

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Anonymous

Posted October 1, 2010

Metropolitan Marvel

I have every complilation from TC and 5 stars go to the Cosmic Game. Pay homage to the eclectic and ambient vibe of the social chill sound that makes a setting mood-enthralled. From NY, to SF, and now in LA, this Corporation has got the right mix of sultry metropolitan sound.

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Anonymous

Posted October 1, 2010

From Worst to First

Last we left TC, their "Outernational Sound" had fallen flat due to a cheapness both in sound design and pacing; 2-minute tracks are not mood setters. "Cosmic Game" steers back in the right groove, with not one flat note. Some short, non-vocal tracks are used, but they're perfect as transitions into the vibrant longer atmospheres within every one of the other tracks. Ahhhh. This is their new best.

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Anonymous

Posted October 1, 2010

nice

i don't ever write reviews. this album is quality. press play and let it go...

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